This invention relates to a machine for rapidly producing microcapsules.
There are several microcapsulation processes wherein a gellable liquid containing a dissolved or suspended core material is formed into droplets, and the droplets are then immersed in a gelling agent to produce shape-retaining, generally spherical capsules which entrap the core material. One example of this general technique is disclosed in U.S. application Ser. No. 24,600, filed Mar. 28, 1979, now U.S. Pat. No. 4,352,883, the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference. This patent discloses that core materials, including labile biological materials such as microorganisms and living tissue such as mammalian cell cultures and the like may be encapsulated without damage by suspending or dissolving the core material in a solution of a substance which can be reversibly gelled, for example, sodium alginate, forming the solution into droplets, gelling the droplets by exposing them to a gelling agent, for example in the case of sodium alginate, a divalent metal solution such as a calcium chloride solution, and subsequently forming a membrane about the droplets.
This encapsulation technique has immense potential in the fields of microbiology, genetic engineering, immunization, and tissue implantation. However, large scale commercial exploitation of the method requires development of a device for producing on a large scale capsules of substantially uniform properties.